Newsweek bashes the GINK movement

Should I be perturbed or pleased that this Newsweek article calls me out by name as one of the misguided, selfish people destroying America by not having babies?

“More and more Americans are childless by choice. But what makes sense for the individual may spell disaster for the country as a whole.” So argue Joel Kotkin and Harry Siegel, ignoring all of the obvious environmental (and other) benefits that could come from a population that’s growing less quickly or even stabilizing. Oh, and they also ignore the fact that the U.S. population isn’t stabilizing; au contraire, the U.S. Census Bureau projects that our current population of 315 million will balloon to 400 million by 2051.

Nonetheless, I and fellow greens who cite potential environmental upsides to lower fertility come in for criticism, along with other cultural degenerates:

[T]he childless and even the partnerless life has gained something of a cultural cachet, with some suggesting they represent not just a legitimate choice but a superior one. It’s a burgeoning movement that’s joined cultural tastemakers, academics, neo-Malthusians, greens, feminists, Democratic politicians, urban planners, and big developers. …

[U]rbanists like Peter Calthorpe … link their density agenda with environmentalism; he’s deemed dense urbanism “a climate-change antibiotic.” Decades after dire predictions of mass starvation and rising population growth lost credibility, the environmental mantra against children remains reflexive. Now greens are pushing for fewer high-income children, since they generate more carbon than offspring in poorer countries. Jonathon Porritt, an adviser to Prince Charles, has called for Britain to halve its population, arguing that having even two children is “irresponsible.” The influential Center for Biological Diversity has called for planetary age standards for getting married or having children, while Lisa Hymas, senior editor at Grist, has signed up for what she calls a “fledgling child-free movement” to stand up against the “pro-natal bias that runs deep.” Her self-designation: “GINK, green inclinations, no kids.”

I just read your article Making a Green Choice: Childfree Living in Mother Earth News and I was relieved to find that I am not alone in my thinking. To voice to anyone, especially my parents, that I am not inclined to have children is next to committing a mortal sin. The looks I get, the assurances of, ‘you’d feel different if they were yours,’ the complete lack of sensitivity and understanding to what I want in life astounds me. There are just so many things that I want to do in life that do not involve having children, and I cannot thank you enough for being that voice I needed to hear to realize it’s okay to say kids just aren’t for me.